Lesson learned

PASADENA, Calif. — Sometimes you've got to do something to discover you shouldn't.

"We learned a lot of mistakes from Season 1," said Eric Kripke, the creator/executive producer of "Super-natural." "We learned not to do bugs and Windigos and monsters that look really cheesy on camera."

It's not that the episodes about the killer insects or the Windigo (a creature derived from a Native American legend) were badly written or acted, it's just that the special effects didn't turn out quite as well as had been hoped.

There has been a shift in "Supernatural" this season, but it's plot-driven. And it's a natural progression.

Whereas Sam (Jared Padalecki) and Dean (Jensen Ackles) spent much of last season looking for their father and eventually found him, his death at the beginning of Season 2 has reverberated through the show.

In addition to sort of the monster-of-the-week episodes, the plotline concerns Sam's part in a still-undisclosed plan being worked by a demon responsible for the deaths of both of the brothers' parents.

But the mythology has not overwhelmed the series. This isn't "The X-Files," "Alias" or "Lost," which became so convoluted you were, well, lost if you tried to join the series in mid-run.

"We think stand-alones are kind of our bread and butter," Kripke said. "But every three or four episodes, we have, like, a big mythology episode where we really move the ball forward. ... And every time we have one, I think something pretty major happens."

That's something "Super-natural" does extremely well — it doesn't give away all the answers at once, but it has advanced the mythology — we understand more, not less (as is the case with some other shows).

"I love that Kripke and the rest of the writers aren't answering questions with more questions so much as they're actually getting something done," Ackles said. "There's nothing that frustrates me more as a fan of television shows than when ... it just feels like they're toying with you."

If you've never seen an episode of "Supernatural" before, you can tune in tonight (8 p.m., Ch. 30) and immediately catch on to what's happening.

"At the end of the day, the whole concept of the show is two brothers on the road with chainsaws in their trunk, battling things that go bump in the night," Kripke said. "That's the whole show."

And "Supernatural" started out good and has only gotten better.

"I think in the first season there's a learning curve for everybody," Padalecki said. "The actors are finding the characters. The writers and creator are finding out what works and who's doing well with the dialogue, who's doing well with the story, what's working, what's not working. Like you said, you have to do a Windigo and you have to do a bugs to figure out you don't want to do a Windigo and you don't want to do a bugs."

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E-mail: pierce@desnews.com